Page 82 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
King slammed a knee into Tyler’s groin because he didn’t trust his hands not to choke the life out of him. To his credit, Tyler stopped fighting.
“Do you understand me?” King asked, slower now. “She doesn’t exist. She died tonight—bled out on the street where you left her. Alexandra Sterling is gone, and if you forget that... I will do to you what I am going to do to them.”
“Oh yeah?” Tyler actually laughed. “What are you going to do to them? You’re a computer guy, King. A desk guy...” Tyler took a sip of his beer, resigned and a little sad. “A good guy.”
But King just shook his head. “Not tonight.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Alex
Alex remembered the dreams. She was five years old and the doctor was getting ready to cut the wrong heart open. He’d been handsome at least, the doctor. Grumpy, but kind, and she’d trusted him even though he thought she was Zoe. Even though he didn’t know the ways she was the weak one. Even though he didn’t know that she was the twin who really needed saving.
When Alex blinked open her eyes, she didn’t recognize the ceiling or the sheets or the pain shooting through her side. Her mouth was dry and her skin itched and—
Morphine. That’s how she always felt on—
Alex reached under the pillow but there wasn’t a gun, and that was when she knew she was in trouble.
That room and that bed and that pain. It was the kind she wasn’t used to. Usually, Alex only hurt on the inside. But now...
There was the sound of running water. A light under a door. And Alex knew she should have been terrified because she was in no shape to fight. But, somehow, a part of her knew she wouldn’t have to.
The door opened on creaky hinges, swinging on its own because the house was too haunted or too old, and that was when she saw him.
A single light burned over an old-fashioned sink. There was a mirror on the wall and black-and-white tiles on the floor and a shirtless Michael Kingsley running his forearms under the faucet like a surgeon prepping for an operation.
She watched the water turn red as King’s arms went back to their right color, and Alex didn’t know it was possible to sway while lying down.
“Whose blood is that?”
He turned off the water and grabbed a towel and came toward her, bare feet almost silent in the dark.
“No one. Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
But it wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t no one. And that was why Alex wanted to claw her own skin off.
“Hey. No.” King was reaching for her. “Lie back down.”
“What happened?” Alex hated how her voice broke, too weak and soft and fractured. She didn’t want to let him see her like this, but there wasn’t a soul on Earth she’d trade him for, and she didn’t understand it. It was like that bed. She couldn’t remember how she got there, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to settle in.
She pointed to the bloodstained sink. “Is it mine?”
She watched him think about the answer. The lights were out and the sun wasn’t up, but she could see him better in the shadows. It was their place in the world, neither light nor dark, day nor night. They were professionally gray, and he might have been the only person in the world who understood, but before she could get the words out, Alex closed her eyes, wishing her life wasn’t just some unending conversation of things she couldn’t say.
“Who, King?”
“It’s not yours.” He smoothed her hair away from her forehead, then rested a hand on her face—not like he was feeling for a fever, but like he just wanted to feelher, so Alex closed her eyes and leaned against his palm, relishing the coolness of Michael Kingsley until—
“I’ve got to go.” She threw the covers off. “The sun’s almost up and—”
“Get back in bed.”
“I need to keep moving. Protocol—”
“The hell with protocol. Put your feet on the bed, Sterling.”
“I need to call it in. I need—”
